


our heart felt like a single thing

by littleleotas



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Marriage Proposal, Multi, Polyamory, but at least i learned something, featuring none of the research i did into early 18th century newspaper articles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 01:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13513875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: For bitnotgood's prompt, "Thomas and Miranda propose to James."





	our heart felt like a single thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bitnotgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitnotgood/gifts).



James McGraw was disinterested in marriage. It was not that he had any particular opposition to the construct – just that he had never once considered it. In general, perhaps, or when a friend or family member entered the blessed union, but not for himself. For himself he saw his career and work filling his available time, and felt no impulse to pursue a different arrangement. His assumption, never voiced nor thought explicitly but merely present in his subconscious, was that when the time was right, the situation would present itself.

Marriage first entered James’s life in the form of a marriage wholly singular in its fashion. The Hamiltons were the catalyst to a reaction that swept James off his feet in its force. With them he felt simultaneously like a new and unknown person to himself, and yet more himself than he’d ever been – the final attainment of the identity he had always been unconsciously striving toward, not realising until now that he had become who he wanted to be.

Their marriage was a partnership, a spirited dialogue, a perfectly timed dance. He loved them individually, of course, but he loved them together in a different way altogether. He loved their repartee, the fleet-footed back-and-forth, like watching a game of tennis with cleverness and wit as the ball. They burned like fire and glowed gently bright like the moon; they were a fierce yet comforting star, drawing the eye to its sparkle and guiding his way back home. He loved the way they looked at each other, the way they ignored everyone else in the room and did just as they pleased – an alliance of them against the world, in every sense. And all of a sudden and quite unexpectedly, he found himself in their orbit, subsumed into the precious, secluded bubble of their love.

He had never been one to question circumstances; he took things as they came to him and worked from there with what he had. But this new person he seemed to have become was full of questions. ‘What if?’ his mind repeated endlessly, question after indignant question rising to the top of his head on a surging wave of anger and futility. ‘What if they weren’t already married?’ was the first question to arrive, but he knew the moment it did that it was pointless. To tear them from each other, even in speculation, seemed not only a cruelty to them but a cruelty to the world, to rip apart a sublime beacon of brilliance, gaiety, and beauty. ‘But if they were not,’ the hateful voice continued, ‘Would you then have to choose between them?’ Again it seemed pointless, to have one without the other: would one want the sun without the moon? The thunder without the lightning? The winter without the spring?

From there the voice’s questions turned to higher targets. ‘Why must it be so?’ the voice demanded, its tone evolving from whining self-pity, bemoaning things that could not be, to the fury of one wronged, jostling against the yoke of injustice. ‘Why could it not be otherwise?’ it asked, questioning what had never occurred to James to question. ‘Whose authority governs which loves are and aren’t right? What right has any governing body to limit one’s happiness?’ It frightened a part of James to have such defiant thoughts screaming through his head – but another part of him insisted this voice had always been here.

He left his apartment one day, the insistent inquisitor filling every corner of his mind with noise. Miranda’s carriage sat waiting outside – an unexpected but not uncommon occurrence. Her smiling face peered out from behind a curtain in the window, her radiance undimmed by the concealment. He opened the carriage door and seated himself opposite her as they began to drive away.

“We have a surprise for you,” she said, smiling mischievously.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Are you unfamiliar with the nature of a surprise, Lieutenant?” she smirked.

The carriage drove on, leaving the city limits as the sun left the sky. James looked curiously at Miranda, who would not give any further information, changing the subject every time he asked to the most interesting plants visible by the roadside, or the beauty of the sunset, or a remarkable article she had read recently on the topic of German opera.

The carriage pulled to a stop at the bottom of a hill, and James exited the carriage, extending a hand to help Miranda down after him. In the dimming dusk light, James could just make out Thomas’s silhouette at the top of the hill. Miranda began the climb up the hill toward Thomas, lifting her skirts just enough to skim the top of the grass. James mused that she looked as if she were floating, a faerie queen gliding across the dew-sprinkled grass as it twinkled in the starlight. He followed her up the hill, and Thomas took first her hand, then James’s when he reached the hill’s summit after her.

Thomas stepped to Miranda’s side, still holding her left hand in his right. She gracefully placed her right hand on his arm, looking up at him with a smile. They turned to face James in unison. He was, as always, overcome by the beauty of them; individually they were stunning, but together they were almost otherworldly. The soft bluish white glow of the moon and stars illuminating them appeared to come from within them.

“James,” said Thomas, his eyes sparkling with reflected starlight. “We have something to ask you.”

James raised an eyebrow, smiling nervously. “Something that necessitated coming all the way out here?”

“Perhaps not a necessity, but,” Miranda said, reaching her right hand beckoningly out to James, “Is it not preferable for the world to consist of only us three?”

James took her hand, smiling. “Of that there is no doubt.”

“She is always right,” Thomas gazed at her adoringly before turning his attention back to James. “Which brings us to the question – Miranda assures me she knows what your answer will be.”

James’s shoulders raised in a submissive shrug. “I cannot imagine she is wrong.”

Miranda laughed a sort of melodic hum, keeping her lips shut in a smile. “Well then, James McGraw, tell us,” she said, dropping James’s hand to pull a gimmal ring identical to the two she and Thomas wore out of the pocket of Thomas’s coat. “Will you marry us?”

James smiled bemusedly, not quite understanding the question at first. His brow furrowed in confusion as he looked at the ring and realised what it was. “But – it isn’t – we can’t, can we? And – and – what would people say? What would happen to-“

“We’ve asked you the only question to which we need an answer,” Miranda said, holding her hand up to still the flood of stammered questions.

“James, my love,” Thomas implored. “Look around you. Do you see anyone but us?”

James shook his head, surveying the empty meadow. “It’s as though we are the only people in the world.”

“Exactly,” Thomas said in an excited whisper. “Don’t worry about anyone else, not for now. For now, it is only us. Tell us, James, if we were the only people in the world, what would your answer be?”

They made it so easy, James thought, to pretend they were truly alone in the world. Such practice in thought experiments in their salons, surely. James closed his eyes and erased London and Nassau and the Navy and society from his head, piece by piece. When he opened his eyes again, it was Thomas and Miranda and him, and all was as it should be.

“Yes,” he said, and the only people in the world embraced and kissed each other as the moon shone just for them.

**Author's Note:**

> A fun fact: this fic was written entirely on a ferry on the North Sea. Writing pirate fanfic on a boat just seems right, you know?


End file.
